Indoor gardening systems can enhance growing conditions or extend a growing season through controlling the light, temperature, nutrients and water conditions for plants. Plants can be grown indoors in dirt media or hydroponically either in solution or solid media, such as, sand, gravel or rockwool. Given that trays of plants in either dirt or hydroponic media on tables take up a lot of square space just like fields of crops, and indoor spaces can be costly, various space saving measures have been developed, including in rotatable drums. Rotating gardening systems are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/352,159 (publication No. 20130180172) entitled Rotating Plant Containing Module with Self-Contained Irrigation System; U.S. Pat. No. 7,401,437; and Canadian patent Nos. 2,421,389, 2,431,523, 2,460,465, 2,401,737, 2,396,317 and 2,343,254. Rotary drum growing systems may array plants in growing trays rotating around a light source.
These indoor gardening systems require adaptations to deliver light, nutrients, water, and ventilation to the plants, see for example, U.S. Pat. No. 9,010,018 for a Growth Chamber Carousel and U.S. Pat. No. 9,043,962 for Modular Self-Sustaining Planter System, and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/331,483 (publication No. 2014/0318012) for Plant Growing Device.
In an example of a rotating drum hydroponic growing system, a drum rotates around a light and rows of growing trays line the interior of the drum. Seedlings are placed in the trays such that the growing plants face the light. As the drum rotates, the plants rotate and while always facing the light, they are sometimes upside down, which means that watering and nutrient delivery is different from a potted plant on a table, and must be adapted. Present rotatable gardening systems can still take up considerable space, particularly when the apparatus to support the growing system has a large footprint.